The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Bethlehem

The Catholic leader in the Holy Land Thursday prayed for Mideast peace, telling the faithful at the traditional birthplace of Jesus the silent night of Christmas overpowers the voice of guns.

"Peace to Bethlehem and all the inhabitants of the Holy Land," Latin Patriarch Fuad Twal said in his sermon at midnight mass in Bethlehem, just a few meters from the grotto that marks the spot where Christians believe their Prince of Peace was born in a stable. "On this night, the silence of the grotto will be even louder than the voice of the cannons and submachine guns," he told pilgrims from around the world who celebrated Christmas in this Palestinian city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. His words rang out as violence escalated in the Gaza Strip where fighters of the Hamas movement that rules the besieged Palestinian enclave fired a barrage of rockets at Israel which responded with a deadly air raid. "The silence of the grotto gives life to those whose voice has been suffocated by tears and who have sought refuge in silence and impotence," he told the crowd that packed the church, which included Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

"The cry of the widows and the children is mixed with the noise of cannons and submachine guns," said Twal who delivered his sermon in his native Arabic and then again in French.

Peace, Twal said, is "the solution for all conflicts and differences. War does not produce peace, prisons do not guarantee stability."